


I Wonder If He Knows

by Librasmile (Tenthsun)



Series: Sins of the Fathers [10]
Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, F/M, Family, Severus has family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 08:44:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11227401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tenthsun/pseuds/Librasmile
Summary: The Faches are the ones he calls family - even if only in silence. And, just as they’ve known him since the day he was born, they know what he cannot bear to admit - even if only to himself.





	I Wonder If He Knows

**Author's Note:**

> _My latest installment in building Severus a better world_

**_I wonder if he knows._ **

His magic wisps and curls around her like smoke - dark, translucent and shimmering like iridescent night. Oh to her face, he’s still the stern professor, using his erstwhile position as her indomitable Head of House to push down the guilt. But when she turns away his magic reaches out to trace the contours of her aura like fingers caressing a lover’s skin. His magic knows where he belongs even if he doesn’t. I wonder how long before the blinders fall away to force his eyes open. I wonder how long he’ll choose to stay shaken, ashamed and afraid...

**\- Cecille Fache, age 41, Beauxbatons, Class of 1971,** **staff herbologist, Fountainebleau Greenhouses** **and Nursery Gardens, Flor Alley (aka Fleur d’Alley)**

 

**_I wonder if he knows the law is on his side._ **

I’m sure he knows. He has to know. Doesn’t he? Even in the Muggle world, she’s two years past the age of consent. And in the wizard one, her parents  _ choose _ him for her. I’ve seen the contract. It’s the advantage of shuffling government papers all day. He signed the plight-troth contract willingly. No force or spell compelled him. The authenticity spells would have rejected the parchment otherwise. 

“It was simply a ruse,” he said, to protect her from far worse candidates. “I was a convenience,” he’ll say with a glare that threatens to hex you if you even hint that he might also have been a worthy one. “They needed someone they could trust to let her go when she was ready,” he’ll say. But he’ll leave out the fact that he has done everything they ever wanted him to do for her exactly as they wanted it done. Not even the machinations of the Dark Lord can change that. Even though what’s done is done - and the desire, the longing still comes off of him in waves - he will not touch her. He’s prostrated himself before priests and even her again and again and received absolution, but still he will not touch her. How unworthy. Yes. Totally, completely unworthy...

**\- Jacquetta Fache, age 38, home-schooled,** **administrative assistant, Level III,** **Registry Office, Dept. of Vital Statistics,** **Ministry of Magic, Government Alley**

 

 

**_I wonder if he knows how she feels._ **

Oh he thinks he knows. He thinks she’s in shock, traumatized and unable to think clearly. Or that she’s infatuated, clinging - despite all he’s done - to a childhood memory of family and safety in which he’ll claim he was only a bit player in cast of dozens.  He thinks - after everything, even after the things they forced him to do that sent him running to us for a safe place to try to correct his sins - that she’s still a child. A girl who cannot possibly be trusted to know her own heart, not in something so - merciless - as love. 

**\- Blanche Thresher (nee Fache), age 43,** **home-schooled, midwife, wife, and co-owner of** **Best Laid Plans and Tables Bakery, Basic Alley**

 

 

**_I wonder if he knows he’s seeing Lily when he sees her._ **

No, not his love for his faithless erstwhile friend, but the so called “failures”. I wonder if he knows that, if we could, we would unearth her bones and reanimate her rotten corpse just so we could wring her crumbling neck before hexing her back into the ground. 

Oh? You think that makes me venomous? You think I’m cursing a saint or showing some sick hatred of women? You fool. Women are flesh and blood creatures with their own minds. They are just as capable of choosing right and wrong as the next man. And equally responsible for the damage they do. Was she coerced? Or did she choose to abandon her so-called friend? What? For a - yes, filthy - name he called her under public humiliation and torture? For which he later braved further public humiliation in enemy territory in order to apologize? For whom he risked his own life after she married his worst enemy? 

Then call me venomous. I have no use for your opinion in any case. I have no doubt that you and the rest of your sanctimonious self-satisfied wizard kind would leave me and mine to rot if not for him. We’re not magical enough for you. We don’t qualify for Hogwarts. So what good are we? None. As far as you lot are concerned, we don’t exist. Which forces him to hide us, hide from us. Can you imagine if the wider world knew of our connection? How they’d try to use us against him?

So he does not come for Hanukkah although he always accepts our gifts. (And always acts as if he hadn’t sent us any in return.) He sends me a hefty package of my favorite Javanese cigarettes - a luxury my wages could never stretch to cover - every New Year’s and utterly ignores the offer of payment I always send in response. It’s why he supplements our still-legal-as-yet Muggle potions trade. Sends us rare ingredients scoured by his renegade house elves - the ones left feral in the surrounding forest when the Ministry confiscated his family’s estate. And it’s why this massive hound lays snoring and snuffling at my feet. 

Not many magical folk as low on the social ladder as we are can claim such a powerful familiar. Of course our jealous neighbors think he could not possibly belong to us - to me. They look at me as if I’m nothing but an errand boy whose family must be boarding the pet of a more powerful wizard. Still, none have dared to suggest that to our faces. They’re wizard enough to read the runes in the heavy leather collar around his neck. Those runes ensure he’ll answer only to my or my family’s commands. They’ve been keeping a wide berth ever since he arrived. 

Oh I’m sure they’re just biding their time until this so-called wizard retrieves his pet. Then the slings and slights against “our foreign hides” will resume. Until then, they’re keeping their distance. Little do they know that Severus has never had a familiar and never will. He’s never wanted one. Many-Licks is ours, to protect us openly as he can only do covertly. The hound is his gift to us, and especially to me, the ex-house mate who spent a year running interference between him and those Gryffindor brutes before they engineered the accident that cost me most of my magic. Just let someone try to attack my little boy the way those bullies attacked Severus, the way our neighbors used to attack me. They’ll get a reckoning of tooth and claw they’ll never forget.

**\- Simon Fache, age 36,** **Cornwall Institute for Practical Magic, Class of 1975,** **(formerly Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry),** **journeyman brewer, Blithe Spirits Distillery, Ferr Alley**

 

 

**_I wonder if he knows how glad we are that he brought her here?_ **

Yes, it’s a risk. A terrible one. But he had nowhere else to go, not with her. There was no one else he could trust. Thank Merlin, he came to his senses and came to us. This is where he belongs, with his burgeoning new family. I can’t wait to hold his newborn child in my arms just as I held him when he was born. Although he’d hex us to hell and back if we actually said it out loud, as far as we’re concerned, in our family, he’s the baby. The youngest child. The most gifted, yes, but still the baby. And now he’s brought us the mother of his baby, his future child. I will not cry, I will  _ not _ cry.... And I will not kiss his forehead when he sleeps. Of course I won’t. Perish the thought...

**Lusine Fache, age 60, midwife (retired), home-schooled,** **French immigrant of French Moroccan ancestry,** **ex-housekeeper, Ravens Wake Estate, North Yorks., C** **urrently resident of Ferr Alley**

 

**_I wonder if he knows we know..._ **

 

**~Fin~**

**Author's Note:**

> _Hope you liked it. If you want to know more about Simon and what they mean to Severus, read Chapter 8 of Hogwarts Help Wanted and[Three True Things About Severus Snape](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7928136/1/Three-True-Things-About-Severus-Snape) at my account at Fanfiction.net._
> 
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> _This is also my latest attempt to introduce my original female character for Severus. I feel like I have to lay the groundwork before I can create a character that readers will believe. So here is the family I like to think - wish - Severus actually had. People who understand and believe in him and are ready and waiting to receive him when he reaches out to them. Hopefully it worked._


End file.
